THE CHRISTIAN IDEA 



OF EDUCATION 




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^4 CONTENTS 

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;^ I. The Bible in a Unique and Supreme Sense 
- the Word of God, 7 

II. The Fact and Radical Nature of Sin in Man, 8 

III. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, . . . .11 

IV. The Transformation of Man after the Image 

OF Him avho Created him, 13 

V. The Indispensable Necessity op the Chris- 
tian Teacher, 17 

VI. The Duty of the Search for Truth Wher- 
ever IT may be Found, 20 

(1) As Instrument of Kegenekation, ... 23 

(2) As Means of Development, 24 

(3) Because in Last Analysis Personal, . . 25 

V"II. Two Possible Objections, 27 

(1) This Ideal Education cannot be Real- 

ized, 27 

(2) Clearly Impracticable, . 31 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 



IN liis inaugural address the president of an American 
college calls attention to the fact that the institu- 

o 

tion over which he was called to preside had been 
^^ always distinctively and emphatically Christian in its 
motives and influence." Another, in his inaugural, 
says, " the colleges originated in a common impulse. 
Broadly stated, the impulse was religious; the force 
that is behind the colleges was tlie spirit of consecra- 
tion, of service, and of sacrifice." In precise harmony 
with the declarations of these two presidents is the well- 
known motto of Harvard college, ^' Christo et Ecde- 
sice/' which very exactly and fitly expresses the high 
purpose of the men who laid in New England tiie 
foundations of our national system of schools. The 
schools which they planted were, speaking generally, 
designed to be " distinctively Christian." 

But what is meant by the plirase "distinctively 
Christian " ? Why use the limiting word, " distinc- 
tively " ? The answer to the latter question appears in 
the fact that there are so many in these later days who 
profess and call themselves Christians who, neverthe- 
less, differ so widely, and even radically, among them- 
selves in their conception of Christian truth and the 
Christian life, that the term " Cliristian " has come to be 
so indefinite as to convey no accurate thought. Hence 
the phrase " distinctively Christian " has been adopted 

5 



6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

to discriminate a certain phase of Christian belief and 
life, related as seed and fruit, otherwise designated by 
the term evangelical. Dr. Josiah Strong, in his plan 
proposing a " federation of churches ^^ '^ for the fur- 
therance of whatever concerns human welfare both of 
soul and bodj/^ insists that its ^^ management must 
be narrowed to those who substantially agree concern- 
ing men's spiritual as well as physical needs/' that is, 
" under evangelical management,'' in order that it may 
be vital and effective. He assumes that there are cer- 
tain fundamental principles of revealed Christianity 
made known in the holy Scriptures which are held 
in very general and sul3stantial agreement by such 
churches as compose the ''- Evangelical Alliance." 

Now it is the contention of this paper that these 
common principles of evangelical Christianity must 
underlie and shape the distinctively Christian school. 
Since no denomination of Christians has a monopoly 
of the principles insisted upon, it is hoped that what 
is said will have the consent of all who from the heart 
call Jesus Christ, Master and Lord. 

Two things are here necessary to be said to prevent 
possible misapprehension : lirst, it is obvious that the 
principles of which we are speaking are not the prin- 
ciples of practical detail, the principles of the technique 
of education, drawn from experience and the study of 
psychology, but of the deeper and more fundamental 
principles which control the conception of the being 
to be educated and the supreme end to be sought in his 
training. In comparison with these the former, im- 
portant as they are, sink into insignificance. The 
second thing necessary to be said to guard against mis- 
apprehension, although it is something like a reflection 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 7 

upon the intelligence of readers to say it^ is that the 
inference is illegitimate that the principles lying at the 
foundation of Christian schools must be the theme of 
instruction in every class-room. To draw such an 
inference is to misconceive the case altogether ; class- 
room instruction in these schools is confined to that 
special department of learning assigned to each instruc- 
tor. The principles herein affirmed hold the relation 
to the school that the bones bear to the body : they 
determine its form. They are not continually exposed 
to view, essential as they are to the structure ; they 
are covered by muscles and nerves and flesh, and con- 
stitute the support of an abounding life. 

We now come to closer quarters with our theme ; 
and find upon careful analysis of the Christian idea of 
education the following principles essential to it and 
constituting it : 

I. THE BIBLE IN A UNIQUE AND SUPEEME SENSE 
IS THE WORD OF GOD. 

Those for whom we speak accept the Bible in this 
sense as a supernatural revelation from God of the 
only and changeless way of salvation for men of all 
ages and all climes. Declining to receiv^i unverified 
assumptions for ascertained facts, they are persuaded 
that no scrutiny of legitimate criticism has in the 
slightest degree impaired, but rather confirmed, the 
claim of the Book of God to be received as the final 
authority in matters of religious faith and practice. 
They have no fear of such criticism. On the contrary 
they conceive that the place of authority given to the 
Bible imposes such criticism upon them as a duty 



8 THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

wliich they may not neglect. But they insist that this 
criticism can ba conducted only by men possessing the 
indispensable qualification of spiritual discernment, the 
absence of which is an absolute disqualification for the 
holy task, however well equipped otherwise the critic 
may be ; men consciously dependent in interpretation 
upon the same Spirit who inspired the writers of the 
Scriptures ; men whose experience of Christian trutli 
fits them to recognize the supernatural clement in 
historic Christianity ; men open-eyed to all the light 
which science and history, philology and philosophy, 
can throw upon their researches, using these as ser- 
vants, but not subjected to them as masters, in order 
that they may attain to an ever-widening apprehension 
of the thought of God in his holy Book. The Bible 
thus interpreted by such men, y/e accept in no esoteric 
sense, — one sense for the philosophers and another 
sense for the common people,— but in the meaning 
which a devout and scholarly exegesis finds in its 
lano;ua2:e. Havino; in this manner ascertained its im- 
port we have no option but to yield to it tlie complete 
self-surrender of faith. 

Passing now within the sphere of truth revealed in 
the Scriptures, we discover a second principle constitu- 
tive of the Christian idea of education, viz., 

II. THE FACT AND EADICAL NATURE OF SIN IN MAN. 

The Scriptures teach that man is not now as to his 
spiritual relation to God as he was in his original state, 
but that he has fallen into bonda2:e as the slave of sin. 
The revelation in the holy Scriptures of the condition 
of man as a sinner does not, let it be noted, constitute 



THE CHKISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 9 

him a sinner. It exists independent of revelation. Tlie 
Duke of Argyll is a true witness when he says (^' Prime- 
val Man/^ p. 188) : " By the corruption of human na- 
ture, I mean the undeniable fact that man has a con- 
stant tendency to abuse his powers, to do what accord- 
ing to even his own standard of right or wrong he 
knows he ought not to do. Human corruption in this 
sense is as much a fact in the natural history of man 
as that he is a biped vv^ithout feathers/^ 

The Holy Scriptures merely reaffirm the fact, make 
known its nature, and point out its remedy. The fact, 
thus certified beyond dispute, confronts us always and 
everywhere in all its tremendous and traoic sio;niii- 
cance. We are compelled to accept it. But consider 
what is involved in this acceptance. We are manifestly 
shut up to the alternative of abandoning the attempt 
to form a conception of education adequate to the pro- 
foundest need of the being to be educated, or the ac- 
ceptance of the solution which Christianity offers ; for 
the fact and radical nature of sin negatives absolutely 
the idea of education that it consists merely in the 
development and training of man's natural endow- 
ments. Education of this sort, wjiatever aspects devel- 
opment may assume, tends by fatal certainty, as all 
history shows, to final disaster and death. Everything 
done along this line is death-struck at the heart. The 
outcome of secular education, except so far as its effects 
are modified by influences foreign to its conception of 
its task, is despair both for the individual and the com- 
munity. We are, we repeat, shut up to the alternative 
of abandoning the attempt to form a conception of 
education adequate to the profoundest need of the being 
to be educated, or tlie acceptance of the solution of the 



10 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

problem which Christianity offers. No other alterna- 
tive is possible. 

What then is that solution ? We reply that in the 
Christian scheme sin and redemption are correlatives. 
It insists upon sin in order that it may say to men, 
^' Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
of the world ! '^ Secular education, uttering itself in 
its own proper character, speaks in the accents of de- 
spair. Christian education, on the other hand, speaks 
in the inspiration of hope. It utters its keynote in 
the words of Christ, " The Son of man is come to seek 
and to save that which w^as lost^' (Luke 19 : 10) ; a mis- 
sion condensed into one word in the message of the 
angel to Joseph announcing the advent, ^^and thou 
shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save his people 
from their sins" (Matt. 1 : 21). But salvation from sin 
is through the reconciliation wrought by God in Christ ; 
and this involves certain facts and truths of revelation 
which Yv^e accept without reserve or equivocation, these 
namely : the pre-existence of the Saviour as the Word 
of God ; his incarnation through his supernatural birth 
of the virgin ; his sinless and beneficent life ; his sacri- 
ficial death on the cross ; his descent into the grave ; 
his resurrection from the dead ; his ascension and ses- 
sion at the right hand of the Father, where he ever 
liveth to carry forward by his Spirit working directly 
on the hearts of men, through nature and through 
providence, but particularly in and through a living 
church, a vital, not mechanical, process of saving men. 
Thus is thrown wide open the iron gate which barred 
our progress. A divine light falls upon our otherwise 
darkened path. A way wdiich the eagle eye of secular 
pedagogical science could not find out is disclosed. We 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 11 

may advance to urge the tliircl principle constitutive of 
the Christian idea of education. 

III. REGENERATION BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

Here we listen to the Great Teacher speaking In the 
imperative mood to a master in Israel for whom, as to 
many masters in our day, the truth enunciated had 
lost its regulative power, '^Marvel not that I said 
unto thee. Ye must be born again ^^ (John 3 : 7). 
From this language there is no appeal. It declares 
the necessity of the new birth for every human being 
in order to his attainment of the destiny for which 
God created him. The radical nature of sin necessi- 
tates a radical change of the springs of action. Sin 
and regeneration are complemental facts as taught iu 
the Scriptures. Until the divine work of regeneration 
has been wrought in the soul no development that is 
essentially true is possible. The Christian school rec- 
ognizes this fact, and seeks by all legitimate means to 
effect this radical change in its pupils. President Whit- 
man, of Colby University (now of Columbian), speak- 
ing in his character as an educator, in an address before 
the Alumni Association of Portland, is reported as say- 
ing : " The training which the university seeks to give is 
that of the whole man. Body, mind, and sj)irit should 
receive attention . . . He did not wish to be regarded as 
preaching when he emphasized the importance of spirit- 
ual training. To use the expression of the German 
poet, he would train our young men and women to be 
Knights of the Holy Ghost." It is easy to push this 
position into absurdity, and so to discredit it ; just as 
the foes of Christianity push the precepts of the Ser- 



12 THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF EDI) CATION 

mon on the Mount into the region of impracticability, 
and dismiss them as false on that account. But as the 
precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are to be applied 
in the exercise of consecrated common sense, so the 
application of the principle in education which we nc>w 
urge is to be made with equally sound discretion. It 
is not necessary in order to be true to it to turn the 
sessions of the class-room into a series of evangelistic 
meetings, but rather that the school shall be pervaded 
by a pure Christian atmosphere, and that by well- 
considered means the constant effort shall be made to 
bring the pupils into vital union with Jesus Christ. 
Wide and long experience has shown that such means 
can be employed with perfect justice to the rights of 
every pupil whatever his religious attitude. Pupils of 
all shades of religious opinion have been trained in 
such schools. 

One thing more is necessary to be said on this point, 
namely, we do not forget the warning of our Lord 
conveyed in the impressive V\^ords, ^' The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, 
but canst not tell w^hence it cometh, and wdiitlier it 
goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit '' 
(John 3 : 8). We set no limitations to the methods 
of the working of the Divine Spirit. We bear in mind 
the thought expressed in the Puritan theology by the 
phrase, "inchoate regeneration," a phrase which rec- 
ognizes the fact that a long course of preparation may 
go on before the great and decisive change in the 
governing disposition of the soul occurs. The divine 
seed of truth may be long in germinating, and a thou- 
sand influences may contribute to the final result, and 
to the character of the soul when regeneration sliall 



THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION lei 

have occurred. We are then not to wait for it, fore- 
going all means of a large and generous culture till it 
has occurred, but, while seeking and expecting it, we 
are rather to use all means contributing to the best and 
highest training, assured that nothing in all the history 
of the regenerate soul is without significance in its 
spiritual development. Nevertheless, after all has been 
said to guard against misapprehension, the point to be 
seized and held fast against all opposition is the fact 
that no development that is radically true is possible 
until regeneration has taken place ; that the turning 
point in the destiny of a human soul is v/hen it is 
translated out of darkness into light, out of the power 
of Satan unto God. Dr. A. J. Gordon (^^ Ministry of 
the Spirit," page 169), speaks in the wisdom of God 
when he says, " Educate, develop, and refine the natu- 
ral man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not 
a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy 
Ghost renews and indwells him.'' All mere culture 
of the unregenerate, even the highest and the best, is, 
we repeat, death- stricken at the heart, and its final issue 
must be death. In the practical application of this 
principle in education, the Christian school finds one of 
the chief reasons of its existence. But regeneration is 
only, as has been said, the implanting of the seed of 
the Divine life, and so we are brought to state the 
fourth coilstitutive principle of Christian education, viz., 

IV. THE TEANSFOEMATION OF MAN AFTER THE 
IMAGE OF HIM WHO CREATED HIM. 

The realization of the ideal which God has for man 
in his creation and in his redemption, this and no 



14 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

lower end, no lower ultimate purpose, controls the ad- 
ministration of the Christian school. " The end of 
education/' says Milton, ^' is to repair the ruins of the 
Fall/' Yes ; not, however, after the image of the first 
man, but of the second man, the Lord from heaven. 
To this " one far-off divine event '' everything in a 
rightly conducted scliool converges. It may be re- 
assuring to any whose wavering faith in the word of 
God needs the support of the last utterance of '^ modern 
thought'' to know that Prof Le Conte, speaking in 
the name of science, declares that "the end and term 
of all evolution is the ideal man, i, 6., the divine man." 
At last then, evolutionary philosophy, receiving her 
inspiration from science after the long tuition of nearly 
nineteen centuries, lisps in imperfect speech the lesson 
taught long ago by her Master and Lord. President 
Tucker of Dartmouth, in his inaugural address de- 
livered in 1893, in a sentence of profound significance 
says : " There is a clear difference in the method and in 
the results of intellectual training as you strike at the 
beginning the religious note, or the note of utility, or 
the note of culture." Indisputably the end sought in 
any undertaking will shape the course pursued and the 
means employed in reaching it. Our position is that 
the transformation of man after the image of Jesus 
Christ includes every possible right development of 
his complex nature, and is the only " crowning good " 
in education commensurate with the grandeur of man's 
origin, the dignity of his capacities, and the limitless 
scope of his destiny. Any less lofty aim degrades him, 
and must relatively degrade the school. 

It is of course understood that the Christian school 
is one only of many agencies employed by God for the 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 15 

attainment of the sublime consummation ; but next to 
the various ministries of the church itself no agency 
has been, or can be made^ more e.Tective to that end. 
Christian men niaj well ponder the language of the 
United States Commissioner of Education, Dr. Harris, 
who in a recent article says : ^^ I do not know of any 
educational reform so much needed as a theory and 
practice of education which unites and adjusts these 
two tendencies — that of the old education toward will- 
training (holding that character is more important 
than knowledge) ; and that of the new education to- 
wards intellectual insight and power of independent 
thought." He adds : ^' We are on the point of losing 
sio^ht of the most valuable heritag-e of the old educa- 
tion, the ideal of a liberal or rounded education which 
contains within it the means of opening the five wan- \ / 
dows of the soul." These are weighty words from a ■/ 
recognized authority in pedagogics, whose high posi- \ 
tion gives him an unequaled opportunity for wide and ; \ 
intelligent observation of current tendencies in educa- \ \ 
tion. We quote Dr. Harris, it will be observed, only ' 
as directing attention in vigorous and definite language 
to an imminent peril to which our schools are exposed. 
He may or may not agree with us in the view we take 
as to the proper means of defense against the impend- v 
ing danger. Our agreement with him is in our earnest * 
protest against the unnatural divorce of the two ten- 
dencies to which he refers. We strenuously believe 
that any education which does not make it its aim to 
" open the five windows of the soul," that does not 
seek the perfection of the whole man, that loses sight 
of the supreme truth that character is of more im- 
portance now and forever than knowledge, is fatally 



16 TPIE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

defective. We hold v/ith equal tenacity of conviction 
that the ideal of education which we cherish is the onlv 
one that can reconcile the two opposing tendencies re- 
ferred to ; for the reason that no other can give full 
scope to both, and so bring them into eifective har- 
mony. For hovv^ can the tendency to exalt character 
as the supreme end in education reach its highest effi- 
ciency unless the term character is given definite con- 
tent, and a practical motive is supplied v/hereby its 
realization may be secured? But philosophical or 
secular ethics is powerless to define character in any 
such sense as to command common agreement, or to 
supply the indispensable motive. Christian ethics, 
~hov/ever, which a Christian school is pledged to teacli, 
gives a personal definition in the living example of 
Jesus Christ, so commanding the assent not only of 
the Christian church, but, speaking generally, of the 
world at large. And not only does it furnish an ac- 
cepted definition of the term character in the example 
of Jesus Christ, but it points out a way to its attain- 
ment in its insistence upon a vital union with him in 
the absence of which that peerless example must ever 
remain an unattainable and mocking ideal. It is evi- 
dent then, that unless the school is controlled by the 
principles of Christianity, its conception of character 
must be essentially defective, and the style of charac- 
ter which it can produce by training legitimate to 
itself, which it must produce unless the result is modi- 
fied by influences foreign to its idea, will certainly be 
lacking in the most essential element. Reserving an 
attempt to show that the second tendency in education 
referred to by Dr. Harris can find full scope only in a 
Christian school for a subsequent part of this paper, 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 17 

we pass here to inquire : How shall the example of 
Jesus Christ be convincingly exhibited, and the vital 
motive for its translation into life be brought into ac- 
tion ? In answer to this question we urge as the fifth 
constitutive principle of the Christian idea of education, 

V. THE INDISPENSABLE NECESSITY OF THE CHRIS- 
TIAN TEACHER. 

This point in oar discussion requires acute emphasis. 
It has pleased God to make his people channels of his 
redeeming grace. While we do not deny, but affirm, 
that the Spirit of Christ operates directly on the hearts 
of men, through nature and through providence, we 
are now concerned with the great truth declared by 
Him who as its source is the Light of the world when 
he said to his disciples, '' Ye are the light of the world ^' 
(Matt. 5 : 14). The history of the church is in great 
part a record and proof of the enlightening and saving 
power of consecrated men. There is confessedly no in- 
fluence so potent in molding character and in deter- 
mining destiny as that which goes out from them. 
They are God's supreme attestation of his continued 
presence among men. They are living temples of the 
Holy Ghost. Christians recognize this fact, and ac- 
cordingly have given the Christian teacher the supreme 
place among the means of education. What an array 
of noble names has adorned the history of Christian 
education ! What man is there among us whose heart; 
does not bound in gratitude to God that he was brought 
face to face as a pupil with some instructor whose 
name is to him a synonym for learning, for nobility 
of manhood, for unselfish devotion to Christ and his 

B 



18 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

fellow-men^ the memory of whom has been throughout 
the intervening years an unfailing inspiration to all 
high endeavor and holy living ! Y/ho vv ill not say 
that he owes more to such contact than to all other 
means of culture besides ? Our supreme need to-day, 
as it has ever been, and, in the nature of the case, 
always will be, is men, pure, unselfish, consecrated. 
Christlike men ; not money less ; not buildings and 
laboratories and museums and libraries less ; but men 
more, men indispensably. The question is sometimes 
asked in a spirit akin to that with which Pilate put 
his skeptical query to our Lord : Is there then Chris- 
tian Greek ? What matters it who teaches it, so that 
the instructor is qualified in the language ? Yes, we 
answer, Greek taught by such a Greek, for example, 
as the late Dr. A. C. Kendrick, Christian and scholar, 
is Christian Greek. Will any thoughtful man say that 
it makes no difference in the results of a young man's 
study of Plato whether his interpretation of that great 
thinker is under the guidance of one whose thinking 
is dominated by Christian philosophy, or of one who 
is fitly described, to use a significant current phrase, as 
a " modern pagan '^ ? 

The truth is, as every one knovv'S vAio is at all con- 
versant with the exigencies of the class-room, a teach- 
er's attitude toward Christianity cannot be concealed 
whatever may be the subject taught. A look, the lift- 
ing of the eyebrows, a gesture, a single v/ord, often 
goes freigh.ted with destiny into the mind and heart of 
the v/atchful and receptive pupil. In fact a teacher's 
influence for or against Christianity is determined more 
by what he is than by what he says or does. Virtue 
goes out of him, if lie is a living Christian, insensibly to 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 19 

himself. That which is deepest and most vital in Iiim 
must find expression. We cannot safely forget in our 
plans of education that there is a fathomless gulf of 
separation between the regenerate and the unregenerate. 
It exists^ whether we forget it or not. No mortal 
sagacitv, indeed^ can infallibly detect it. 'No external 
organization certainly discriminates those who are on 
the one side or the other. But the gulf is there^ fixed 
in the spiritual constitution of every human being by 
personal choice. " Things are what they are/' says 
Bishop Butler, " and the consequences of tliem will be 
what they will be. Why then should we wish to be 
deceived ? '' 

An unregenerate man is by moral certainty an enemy 
of Christj and he will show it even though he have no 
conscious volition in the case. A distinguished educa- 
tor of ^lassachusetts gives it as his judgment tliat^ 
" The most effective moral training of the school is in- 
direct and incidental, resulting from its operations, and 
the unconscious tuition of the teacher. '^ President 
Hovey says, " Some of the greatest and best results are 
brought to pass by almost aimless acts of a holy soul.'' 
The teacher then, let us not forget, cannot, if he would, 
be a mere functionary, a sort of animated phonograph 
grinding out only the specialties of his own depart- 
ment. If he could be that, he would not be fit to 
teach. Since he is, and must be more, the more of a 
man he is, the more sure is it that his influence will 
be correspondingly determined for or against Christ. 
Dr. Charles TI. Parkhurst, with his usual incisiveness, 
gives the true conception of the teacher in a recent 
sermon in which he said : " Not a college s:raduate of 
lis but would be greater, mightier, and more luscious 



20 THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

man to-daj if we had not been held for four years of 
our life in enforced contact with so much commonplace 
material and cultivated diminutiveness in the shape of 
tutors and professors who could amuse us with their 
erudition, but could not work in us a profound inspi- 
ration. I do believe that a great Christian college, 
manhood manufactory, manned by men that are every 
inch men, wide, vigorous, sweet, and apostolic, and that 
hold the college for Christ and mankind and the ages 
to come, I do believe that such a college must be to 
the Lord a deep and perpetual joy." Prof. Le Conte, 
whom we have before quoted, insists that in order to 
social progress " rational selection '^ must take the place 
of the ^^ natural selection " of organic development ; 
and maintains accordingly that the improvement of 
society is possible only through the careful choice, 
among other social forces, of our teachers. In view of 
the blind, haphazard way in which they are usually 
charged with their high responsibility, he exclaims, 
thus repeating the thought of so ancient an observer as 
Plutarch : '^Alas ! how little even yet does reason con- 
trol our selection in these things ! How largely are we 
yet under the control of the law of organic evolution ! " 
The indispensable necessity of the Christian teacher is 
made inescapably evident when we consider the sixth 
constitutive principle of Christian education, viz., 

VI. THE DUTY OF THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH WHER- 
EVER IT MAY BE FOUND. 

The second tendency noted by Dr. Harris is the 
tendency of the new education toward intellectual in- 
siglit and power of independent thought. We have 



THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION Zl 

maiDtained that the first tendency, that which makes 
character the supreme end in education, can find full 
scope only in the ideal of education which we are de- 
fending. We are now to attempt to show that the same 
is true of the second tendency. This, we think, is evi- 
dent from the following considerations : 

(1) Because of the insistence of Christian education 
upon personal conviction in religious concerns. The 
duty, and hence the right, of private judgment consti- 
tutes the corner-stone of evangelical Christianity. We 
cannot, if true to our principles, seek to impose mere 
authority upon the human soul, since " every one of us 
shall give a(?count of himself to God." We cannot 
strive to win mere proselytes ; for a proselyte, using 
that word in a secondary sense, is one who has adopted 
a new set of religious opinions and practices for the 
sake of convenience, or for social reasons, or at the dic- 
tate of taste, or from some other motive lower than 
loyalty to Christ. Such action we abhor as sacrilege. 
We seek not proselytes, but converts of the heart. To 
us the conscience of every pupil is a sacred thing, never 
on any pretence to be influenced by unhallowed mo- 
tives. This ver}^ attitude in itself insures intellectual 
earnestness and honesty, liberality and breadth of view. 

(2) We maintain, secondly, that the tendency of 
the new education toward intellectual insight and 
power of independent thought can find full scope only 
in the ideal of education which we cherish, because of 
the insistence by evangelical Christianity upon life in 
Christ as the true life of man, his restoration to his 
normal relation to God, the Source of life. The soul 
is one, and not a thing of compartments like a modern 
steamship, so that one part can be shut off from the 



22 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

other parts. Intellect^ sensibility, and will move always 
simultaneously in a unity of action. So man as a com- 
plex personality, made up of the physical, niontal, and 
spiritual elements, acts as a unity. What affects one 
part affects every other part. There is no such thing 
possible as a training of one element that is not, in 
some sense, a training of the whole. Since the soul of 
man then, is a unit, a defect in one part limits in some 
way the effectiveness of the action of the whole j^ancl a 
defect in the highest element in man's complex nature 
makes certain the most serious results. 

Now according to the Scriptures there is by nature 
a defect in man's spiritual relation to God so serious 
as to find adequate expression only by such metaphors 
as blindness, deafness, palsy, and death. In pagan 
nations, therefore, even among the most cultivated 
peoples of antiquity, the intellect of man seems to grope 
bewildered in darkness ; there is no certainty in its 
processes and no agreement in its results. Hence it is 
that the first indispensable step in a true Christian edu- 
cation is the restoration of the soul to spiritual life, in 
order to the best and highest and harmonious exercise 
of its powers. Accordingly, if history teaches anything, 
it proves that awakened spiritual life has always and 
everywhere been followed, both in the individual case 
and in communities, by mental activity before un- 
known ; by ^' intellectual insight and power of inde- 
pendent thought." In fact the disunion of the two 
tendencies deprecated by Dr. Harris is but an echo of 
the sin of Eden by v.iiich man was alienated from 
the life of God ; is a violation of the conception of the 
unity of* the spiritual life everywhere inculcated in the 
Scriptures ; is a perpetuation of the old and pernicious 



THE CHRISTIAIir IDEA OF EDUCATION 23 

superstition which mechanically separates the religious 
from the secular, the sacred from the profane, the 
priesthood from the laity, substituting a tradition of a 
mechanical churchism for the teaching of a living Chris- 
tianity. On this point Phillips Brooks says : " Tiie 
true idea of relationship (between God and man) in- 
volves the presen3e of God in every highest activity of 
man ; to separate them is not simply to deny man a 
power he needs, it is to break a unity, and to set a part 
of the power to do what the whole power ought to do 
as one.'^ It is the glory of Christianity that it reveals 
the provision and supplies tlie means whereby man 
may be renewed in the spiritual life of God, so that 
whatever he does in any sphere of action may be 
energized and consecrated by one living motive. 

Yie maintain, in the third place, that the tendency 
of th6 new education toward intellectual insight and 
power of independent thought can find full scope only 
in the ideal of education which we cherish, because of 
its iusistence upon the truth as the supreme gooi. 
Giving the supremacy to the truth as revealed in the 
Scriptures, as Christian education must, we insist upon 
that truth, first, as the instrument of regeneration ; 
secondly, as the means of the development of the life 
of God in the soul ; and thirdly, as in its last analysis 
personal, and embracing truth of whatever nature. 

We insist upon truth, firstly, as the instrument of re- 
generation. It is a fact, heavily freighted with mean- 
ing, that Christianity makes its appeal to the intellect 
of man. It comes to him as the thou2:ht of God toward 
him. It challeno;es investisration, and asks rational 
acceptance, loving assent, and v/illing obedience. God^s 
saving purpose is communicated to us in a Book, the 



24 THE CHRISTIAi^^ IDEA OF EDUCATION 

word of God. At the outset it asks for intellectual 
insight and power of independent thought. Every- 
where in its pages, by precept and example, the indis- 
pensable necessity of knowing the truth, loving the 
truth, and obeying the truth, is inculcated. The Saviour 
of men claims himself to be the Truth (John 14:6). 
^' Every one that is of the truth,'' he says, " heareth 
my voice'' (John 18 : 37). ^^And ye shall know the 
truth, and the trutli shall make you free " (John 8 : 32). 
Regeneration is not a magical process, but the work of 
the Holy Spirit through the instrumentality of the 
truth. In striving to effect it, we seek to bring the 
soul under the direct influence of unadulterated truth. 
We refuse to interpose any creed, any interpretation of 
doctors, any religious customs and institutions, how- 
ever hoary with age and venerable with sacred associa- 
tions, between the soul and God. We strive to bring 
it under the full blaze of the Sun of Righteousness, as 
his rays stream forth from the whole and every part 
of the Holy Scriptures, unref racted by the intervention 
of human teaching, in order that under the quickening 
power of the truth it may be awakened from the sleep 
of death into the life of God. It is the truth of the 
Holy Scriptures which is the sword of the Spirit of 
Christ by which he w^ins his conquest over the souls 
of men. 

Secondly, we insist on the truth because it is the 
means of the development of the life of Christ in man. 
For this the whole and every part of the Holy Scrip- 
tures are requisite. " Every Scripture ... is also 
profitable for teaching, for reproof, . . for instruction 
... in righteousness : that the man of God may be com- 
plete, furnished completely unto every good work " (2 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 25 

Tim. 3 : 16, 17). Precisely here ^Ye fiud the reason why 
some thoughtful men object to creeds ; not because they 
are not useful in their place, and may not be true as far 
as they go, but because they are necessarily insufficient 
for the great end, namely, the nurture of the spiritual 
life, for wliich truth is revealed. 'No wit of man has 
conceived, or can conceive, a creed broad enough and 
comprehensive enough and minute enough to embrace 
all that the Scriptures teach in their marvelous adapta- 
tion to every phase of character and every exigency of 
human experience. When, then, any among thought- 
ful evangelical Christians object to creeds, it is not be- 
cause they believe so little and so apathetically, but 
because they believe so much and so intensely ; it is 
because they are persuaded tliat not only the truth, but 
the whole truth in its amazing unity in variety is 
necessary to the full and harmonious development of 
the life of Christ in the soul. 

Thirdly, we insist upon the truth because in its last 
analysis it is personal, embracing truth of whatever 
realm. We mean by saying that truth is personal, to 
affirm that all truth must be traced back to its source 
in God in order to find for it a sufficient cause and 
voucher. Consider the moral law. It has no existence 
in the abstract. As abstract we may make it a theme 
of thought, but it has no real existence except in a 
moral being. Thought has no real existence unless 
there is a thinker ; love has no existence unless there 
is one who loves ; will has no existence unless there is 
one who wills. ISTow the moral law, involving the 
activity of intellect, sensibility, and will, while in a 
sense it is in man, is also above him ; he did not enact 
it ; he cannot annul it ; its rewards and its penalties 



26 THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OE EDUCATION 

are independent of liis will ; its ought comes down 
upon him from an authority above him to which, will- ^ 
ing or unwilling, he is subject. Nor can the source of 
this authority be found in any number of subjects — 
in humanity — it can be found only in God, Creator 
and Sovereign J in him whose image as a moral being 
man bears. In the moral lav/ man stands face to face 
with the Father of our spirits ; it is " the expression 
•^.nd witness of a living, personal relation and inter- 
action between God and man/^ We must go farther 
than this. Truth in the created material world is in 
its last analysis personal. Its laws are not self-enacted, 
nor are they self-operative. The basal efficiency in 
them, upon yyhich they every moment depend is, to 
use the language of Dr. Hodge, " the ever-present and 
ever-active God.^^ They are exhibitions, object-lessons 
of his power and wisdom, of his love and righteous- 
ness. Though he abides in the eternal separateness of 
his incommunicable infinity, nevertheless we see him 
in all created persons and things. As created tliey 
possess a secondary reality of their OY\^n, but beneath 
it stands the Primal Reality, God. 

Since truth is in this sense personal, is God revealed, 
Christian education regards it as a high duty^ to neglect 
which would be a betrayal of its trust, to search for 
truth wherever it may be found. Holding aloft the 
Holy Scriptures as a light unto our feet and a lamp 
unto our path, we push our way cautiously but fear- 
lessly into all realms of investigation in order to read 
'' God's thought after him,^' . Cautiously, we say ; for 
we do not forget the presence and work of the " prince 
of this world. '^ He can speak God's truth in a false 
sense, and in such relations as to make truth false- 



THE CI-IEISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 27 

hood^ as lie did to our Lord in the temptation. He 
can pervert tbe operation of beneficent laws, throngli 
the working of evil wills, so that they issue in miser}^ 
and death. We recognize God as present in judgment 
as well as in mercy. We carefully discriminate voices, 
and dlstino-uisli between ao:ents. A'Ve do not believe 
every spirit, knowing that many deceivers are entered 
into the ^vorld (i John 4 : 1 ; 2 John 1 : 7). Yfe listen, 
however, eagerly for the voice of God whether speak- 
ing by the direct monitions of his Spirit, by his prov- 
idence in liistory, in the interpretations of nature 
which physical science makes, w^henever, w^heresoever 
or by wdiomsoever he speaks, and, assuring ourselves 
that it is the voice of God, hearing w^e obey. We are 
indifferent to no truth. All truth, provided it be as- 
similated by a devout soul, and translated into life, has 
its relation to the Christian life, the Christian charac- 
ter, maiving it larger, richer, more symmetrical, trans- 
formino: man into the imasie of Him w^ho created him. 
In this manner we demonstrate that narrownesg of 
view and intellectual stagnation are impossible in a 
rightly conceived and properly conducted Christian 
school. In fact, we do not claim too much, nay, it is 
simple fidelity to the facts in the case, when we assert 
that no other school can have an open vision toward 
all truth ; and hence no other school can have the 
spirit and purpose to interpret fearlessly and faitlifuily 
the revelation which God has made of himself in his 
universe. 

Two possible objections must here be biaefly noted 
in conclusion. 

It may be objected, first, that the ideal of education 
herein sketched cannot be realized in our public 



28 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

schools. Granted. It may be suggested, also, that it 
cannot be realized in strictly technical schools and in 
universities properly so called, designed for those who 
have received their general disciplinary training and 
whose judgment is supposed to be measurably mature. 
Perhaps not ; but waiving now a discussion of the 
possibility of realizing the ideal in technical schools 
and in universities properly so called, the case is plain 
as respects our public institutions. They are supported 
by general taxation ; and in communities of mixed 
population our doctrine of religious liberty seems to 
forbid that pupils shall be surrounded by the religious 
influences which Christian schools permit and require. 
This is their serious defect and limitation. While 
insisting upon this let no one suppose that vve intend 
to suggest that our public school system should be 
abandoned. We think, on the contrary, that it should 
be maintained against all foes. It is the best in its 
main features that in the present condition of things 
can.be supported at the public cost. 

Nevertheless we must not be blind to the deterio- 
ration of the system in the matter of religious influ- 
ence from the ideal of its founders. We forget at our 
peril its serious defect and limitation ; how serious, be- 
comes clear if we accept in its full force the monitory 
words of the Father of his Country in his farewell 
address, where he says : " Let us with caution indulge 
the supposition that morality can be maintained with- 
out religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influ- 
ence of refined education on minds of peculiar struc- 
ture, reason and experience both forbid us to expect 
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of re- 
ligious principles.^^ This impressive language takes on 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 29 

a new emphasis of meaning when it is read in the light 
of the Prussian pedagogical maxim^ the condensed ex- 
pression of long and scientific observation, namely, 
^^ Whatever you would have appear in the nation's 
life you must put into the public schools.^' There are 
ominous portents in our national sky which only an 
ostrich optimism can treat lightly, but which thought- 
ful patriots will deeply ponder, not indeed in the spirit 
of a despairing pessimism, but with a quenchless hope 
that we shall be able by wise measures and strenuous 
exertions to avert impending dangers. 

We have said that the service rendered to our 
country by our public schools is great and beneficent. 
This is due, first, to the fact that there are many 
earnest Christian teachers in them who, perhaps in- 
sensibly to themselves, are by their influence purifying 
these fountains of the nation's life ; but it must be re- 
membered that the presence of such teachers in the 
schools is an element foreign to the strictly secular 
idea of education, and the inestimable advantage thus 
arising must in justice be credited to the Christian idea 
of education. The value of the service rendered by 
the public schools is due, secondly, to the fact that as 
far as they teach truth in any department of human 
research, since all truth, as we have maintained, is God 
revealed, the effect of such teaching is salutary, even 
though not in an evangelical sense saving. More 
than this must be said : God is in his world, and is 
only seemingly conquered by evil. "By the deter- 
minate counsel and foreknov/ledge of God'' guilty 
agents, guilty so far as and because they were acting 
in the full exercise of a free choice, delivered our Lord 
to condemnation and death ; the hand of God was 



30 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

immanent in the guilty human hands that nailed him 
to the cross^ for thereby he spoiled principalities and 
powers, making a show of them, triumphing over them 
in it (CoL 2 : 15). We exult exceedingly in the y/is- 
dom and po^ver of God who girds the Cyrus of indif- 
ferentism to himself and his cause, boasting it may be 
that it does not know him, and who puts a hook in 
the nose of willful and determined opposition, so that 
in the serene confidence of faith we may say of those 
who set themselves against the Lord and against his 
Anointed, they mean it for evil, but he means it for 
good. Nevertheless we insist that this serene confi- 
dence of faith is not a laisser faire spirit. Those who 
hold this faith well grounded in intelligence knov/ 
that tlie secret of the final victory on the world's great 
battlefield is entrusted to the church of regenerate 
souls, and to it only, and that through that church 
Christ is making his real cii quests. 

It is for this reason that Christian men who discern 
the signs of the times persistently refuse to abandon 
to alien control that most potent agency for deter- 
mining the destiny of men for time and eternity, the 
education of the young. Perceiving clearly the defect 
at present inseparable from our public institutions, un- 
deterred by the unintended sophistry of friends or the 
antagonism of avowed foes, they set their faces like a 
flint to establish and maintain distinctively Christian 
academies and colleges where our youth who are pass- 
ing through the most critical period of life may be 
brouglit under the most favorable and powerful influ- 
ences tending to the formation of pure, strong, noble, 
and Christlike characters. They are not unmindful 
of the difficulties of the task. It requires courage and 



THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 3i 

perseverance, self-sacrifice and, more than all, faith in 
the livino' God, to found and conduct such schools. 
But the end attained will be worth all that it w'ill cost. 
It may be objected, secondly, that the ideal herein 
sketched is clearly impracticable, and tliat it is useless 
to attempt to realize it. It is sufficient answer to this 
objection to call attention once more to the fact that 
this ideal is not new, but has been partially realized in 
experience, and has yielded the best results in educa- 
tion w^hich this country has ever known. We may, 
however, make further reply by quoting a sentiment 
from Mr. Herbert Spencer, which carries with it the 
force of axiomatic truth. He is writing in defense of 
ideals in education pronounced to be in advance of the 
time. He supposes his critic to maintain that there 
can be no advantage in elaborating and recommending 
such methods ; and disposes of the objection in the foi- 
lowung masterly style : '^ Y/e must contend,'^ he says, 
" for the contrary. Just as in the case of political 
government, though pure rectitude may at present be 
impracticable, it is requisite to know^ w^here the right 
lies, so that the changes we may make may be toward 
the right instead of away from it.'' Precisely so. Fit 
ideals must ever be beyond the reach of present realiza- 
tion, and herein lies their value : they are ever beckon- 
ing incentives to a nobler future than any past can 
have knovrn. In the matter of attainment in the Chris- 
tian sphere it is emphatically true. Our Master is the 
world's incomparable idealist. From the bcoinnino^, 
and still always through the lagging centuries, he goes 
before his ow^n people, calling them onvrard and up- 
ward ; and yet not to fruitless aspirations and hopeless 
struq:2;les. He assures tliem that nothing; is imnossible 



32 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF EDUCATION 

to a rightly grounded faith, and by the girding of his 
Spirit in the inner man he strengthens them Avith his 
own omnipotence. It will be a day of decline in Chris- 
tian civilization when the divine discontent of lofty 
ideals ceases to urge men on to higher and better things 
in all departments of human action. 




